There are already known various constructions of testing adapters of the type here under consideration. In one of such known adapter constructions, the testing adapter includes a plurality of metallic resilient contact pins, each of which includes a thin tubular cylinder jacket having a length which is a multiple of its maximum outer diameter. This cylinder jacket, together with a contact member that is fixedly inserted thereinto, forms a cylinder component. In this construction, a piston of a piston component that is coaxial to the cylinder component is supported for axial sliding in the cylinder component. The contact member includes a contact head situated outwardly of the cylinder jacket and serving for contacting the conductor plates. The piston of the piston component projects rearwardly beyond the cylinder jacket and extends through a bore of a rear guiding plate to contact a connecting contact of a contact carrier for establishing electrical connection of the resilient contact pin with such contact. Furthermore, a helical compression spring is arranged on the region of the piston component which projects over the cylinder jacket. The spring is braced against a rear end face of the cylinder jacket and against a shoulder of the piston component. This known testing adapter further includes a front guiding plate which has a through bore for each resilient contact pin. A front region of the cylinder jacket is guided with a sliding bearing play in the respective through bore of the front guiding plate.
As advantageous as this adapter construction may be in many respects, experience has shown that it suffers from certain drawbacks, such as a relatively high cost of manufacture thereof, unnecessarily large dimensions of certain components or elements of the contact pins used therein, and resulting relatively high weight of this testing adapter.